Mothering circa 1938

So while I was at the antique shop with my daughter last week I stumbled upon some old pamphlets. I found two that I just couldn't resist buying. One was written by a doctor in Wisconsin, and mostly concerned mothers postpartum care. The other was written by a doctor in London, and mostly concerned the baby. Both were dated 1938.

The first pamphlet, by the doc in Wisc. is just entitled "Postpartum Instructions." Some of the information was just common sense. I have pulled out the things that made me laugh or gasp! (I put my comments in italics : )

"Now that your baby has been born, you need and deserve a good rest. You may turn onto your stomach 24 hours after delivery and should do so at least 15 mins everyday. (do you think that was to help flatten her stomach?) You may use a backrest for meals by the 3rd day and you may sit in a chair on the tenth." ( You may sit in a chair on the tenth day? How many days did these women stay in the hospital?)

Here's what it says about going home:

3rd week: "Stay in your nightclothes and remain on one floor and be in bed at least half the day. You may get up for meals if you like." (Quite the life of leisure. Did these women have household help?)

4th week: "You may now go to the lower floor, but not more than twice per day." (Have they gone stir crazy yet?)

5th and 6th week: "You may go out and get fresh air and take short walks, but do not drive in a car. Your first drive should be to my office at the end of the 6th week." (It doesn't say do not drive A car, it says do not drive IN a car. Are we to assume women weren't supposed to drive at all?)

"You may take a shower anytime after the twelfth day and a tub bath when your discharges have ceased to be bloody." (TMI! No shower for 12 days?)

I've got to tell you , this first booklet was cracking my daughter and I up at the antique store.

Here's more concerning caring for the baby......didn't find this info quite as funny:

"Now on to care of the baby: "Keep to your schedule-Do not decrease the interval between feedings and do not feed for more than 20 mins. Do not handle your baby anymore than is necessary or let others do so. A baby must cry some and if you pick him up to stop him a habit that may take months to break will be quickly started. Turn the baby occasionally, but avoid picking him up too often. The less the baby is handled and stimulated, the better he will sleep, eat and grow. " (I feel sorry for those babies.)

Now onto the next booklet written by the female doctor in London. It appears there was a series of these pamphlets given out for each month of a child's development. I could only find the one concerning the babies fifth month. I can only imagine what the other pamphlets had to say.

This booklet was entitled "Baby Care, A helpful guide for mothers on the care of Infants, Fifth Month."

The book covers the basics. A lot is very similar to things we do today. I will touch on the things that made me open my mouth and go "wow".

Here is the schedule the booklet says the mother and baby should be following:

6am: Baby's feed. Change him and put him back to bed.

8am: Baby's orange juice. Sun bath for half an hour, if summertime. Mothers breakfast.

9:30am: Wash the baby's face, hands and buttocks and dress him for the day. Baby's Cod Liver Oil.

10am: Cereal feeding. He should then be put outdoors, given his half hour sunbath (unless he had it earlier) and then left in his carriage. Mother may find it convenient to take him for a short walk in the morning.

12noon: Mothers lunch. Offer the baby some water.

1pm: Mothers rest.

2pm: Baby's feed, breast or bottle. Change him and put him outdoors again. During the afternoon he should have another 1/2 hour sunbath.

4pm: Offer the baby some water.

5pm: Undress the baby, leaving on his diaper, and leave him lying on the bed for his daily exercise.

5:30pm: Baby's bath.

6pm: Baby's feed. This may be breast or bottle, or towards the end of the 5th month, a second feed of cereal.

6:30pm: Mothers dinner.

10pm: Change and feed baby, breast or bottle. He should now sleep all night, and if he wakes up, should be only offered water.

Here is some additional info regarding the schedule:

"Baby should be receiving 1 teaspoonful of cod liver oil once or twice a day depending on how much fresh air and sunshine the baby is receiving."

"Cereal should be thinned with milk so that it can be given in the bottle."

On weaning: "If the mother keeps well, there is no reason she should not continue nursing up till the 10th month. Nursing beyond the 10th month is unnecessary and may even be harmful as by that time the natural nursing period has passed and the milk loses it's nutritive value."

And this next part cracked me up:

"Taking baby to the seaside: When the family spends a vacation at the seaside, the mother should avoid taking the baby to the beach. Small babies, bare heads bald and wobbly, bright pink under a scorching sun, eyes screwed tight against the glare of the sand, fretting against flies, grit and heat, must be miserable at the beach. Even when the baby is placed in a bassinette, which is shaded by an umbrella, and covered with mosquito netting, there are still many objections to his being on the beach. He is in the midst of and surrounded by far too many people; he may even be jostled by them, sneezed over, coughed over by them, splashed with salty water dripping off their bodies, sprinkled by sand flung up in their games. He is exposed to too much heat, too much light, and too many germs. No, the beach is no place for the baby."

It must've been hard to be a mother 70 years ago. There were so many rules. How about one rule....ok, maybe two: Love your baby and follow your gut. The stuff about not picking the baby up makes me so sad. The schedule for feeding makes me sad. I can't believe those mothers didn't really want to pick their babies up. I wonder how many actually followed these booklets?

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.

~Rajneesh~

House Cleaning!

Although you'll find our house a mess, Come in, sit down, converse. It doesn't always look like this: Some days it's even worse

I hate cleaning. There, I said it. I am a stay at home mom and I suppose one of my primary purposes is supposed to keep a clean house but I hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it!!!!!!

It's not like my house is filthy. It's more cluttered than anything else. Sure I do let the laundry pile up, because laundry really is the bane of my existence. It just multiplies. And just when you think it's done, there's more again. At least when you vacuum, the rug looks clean for at least a few hours. Until the cat yaks on it anyway.

I have tried different systems over the years to help me keep my home clean. Flylady being the latest. I think the problem is that I am not that kind of person. You know, the kind of person that knows she will wash her kitchen floor Monday, scrub her toilets Tuesday, polish the silver Wednesday (silver?) whether it needs it or not. I clean when it needs it. If it doesn't look dirty, does it really need to be cleaned? I know those systems are meant to help one keep their house clean, so it never will look dirty. But my brain just can't wrap around doing something that doesn't need doing!

So I wait until my house is good and messy and then I clean. Begrudgingly of course. I do finally get to the point where I can't take it anymore. My DH would tell you I am a slob. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. I am a bit of a pack-rat, that label I will accept. But I am not a hoarder. Not like those hoarders I've seen on Oprah. (Have you seen those shows? Shudder!) You can walk through my house (at least most of the time, LOL : )

I keep things because I am one of those people who worries that I may need something one day. And that day will be the day after the Salvation Army has just driven off with my stuff. I know it's just stuff, but I like my stuff. I also have way too many clothes. Most of that stems from the small problem I have varying what size I wear occasionally. Better to keep the clothes if I may need them rather than having to buy new ones again, right?

My mom was a slob. She was messier than me. So I think there must be hope for my daughters because it appears that the succeeding generations are improving. Although my grandmother was pretty tidy. She actually used to clean our house a lot. (My mom was an only child and I think when my grandmother got old, she was trying to make up for past sins.) We also had cleaning people. I actually used to clean houses myself funny enough. My mom (the slob) had her own cleaning company. We did a really good job in other people's houses. I think it's much easier to clean someone else's house because you aren't distracted by your own stuff. Or by your kids, or the phone or General Hospital.

My DH worries my daughters won't know how to keep a home tidy when they get older. He says I set a bad example by not making them clean. Hmmm, is that all that matters? Will their value be less if they like to leave their clothes on the floor and only scrub the toilets once a month?

Like me, my daughters know how to clean, they just don't like to do it. I only know a few people who really LIKE to clean house, and those people could use a little counseling IMO. I realize in life everyone has things they NEED to do, but is house cleaning really one of them. Sure you don't want to live in health code violation territory, but a few piles of laundry and dishes in the sink isn't life threatening. Knowing how to do something and having the desire to do it are entirely different things. I am sure when my girls get older, if they choose to marry and have a family, they will be more than capable of keeping their home tidy enough. For them. Why isn't what is good enough for them good enough?

Life is short. I feel the time slipping by me so fast. I have my kids home with me, at least right now. My eldest is talking high school, so I may lose her in a year. (I know, it's not like she is moving away, but she'll be gone all day!) Soon enough I will be old and my kids will be gone. I don't want to spend all my time with them right now worrying about whether or not my house is clean enough or yelling at them to clean their rooms. Looking at the big picture, does it really matter? We are all well fed, we shower and wear clean clothes, we mow the grass. I wash the floors when they are sticky, I wash the dishes when we need clean ones. I scoop the cat litter. The essentials are done on a daily basis. You may visit me and see dust on the furniture, and cobwebs in the corner. There may be a pile of newspapers in the corner and a pile of laundry on the bedroom floor. There might be recycling piling up in the kitchen and last nights dinner dishes in the sink. Will you think less of me? When I die, will it matter whether I kept a clean house? Is that what people will say at my funeral "I really liked Donna, sorry to see her go, but boy was she a slob!" Or will they say that I was a person willing to help when needed, who was always there for her kids, who took in stray animals and tried to make her small corner of the world a better place? Isn't doing those types of things more important than how clean I kept my house? I think so, and sometimes, even if it may sound selfish, what I think is all that matters.

My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

~Erma Bombeck~

Ode to my Mother on Mother's Day

My mom, Carol Ann, was born July 10th, 1941. She died June 13th, 2004. It's been almost 4 years since her death and I still miss her. We didn't have that great of a relationship, her and I, but I still miss her.

My mom was what most would call a troubled person. She was an only child of a clueless mother and a drunken father. I don't really remember my mother's father, he died when I was 5. What I know of him is mostly from the stories people told. And most of those stories weren't too pretty. Seems like the dysfunction in our family started back pretty far. I loved my mom's mom. She doted on her grandchildren. It was only as I got older that I began to understand that a lot of what she did for her grandchildren were things she wished she had done for her own daughter.

The pain and trouble started early for my mom. She suffered great emotional and physical abuse. She never got over it. It affected the rest of her life. She married young, and had children young. Too young to really be a good parent. She was never really parented, so she never learned how to parent. My father didn't have a great life either, so really, neither one of them really had a clue about how to raise children. They did what they knew: they controlled, they yelled, they beat and they ignored. I do think they loved us, they just had no idea how to show it.

This ode to my mother is not meant to tear her down. I actually had a fairly good relationship with my mom when I was very young. We moved to Illinois when I was 8 years old. My mom was born and raised in NYC. She loved the city. She moved very unhappily to "suburbia" when my father was transferred with his job. It was during those years that I became aware of my mother's problems with depression. I spent most of my childhood remembering my mom being in the hospital. It wasn't until I was in 7th grade or so that I was finally told what types of hospitals my mom was in. Sure she occasionally had a regular illness that required her to go the hospital, but most of the time she was in the psych ward. I think a lot of her physical ailments were also caused by her psych problems. I remember spending many weekends driving with my dad to visit my mom. I used to count the dead animals on the road while we drove. I don't know why I remember that. I remember the time they let her out for Christmas. She had to go back the next day.

I am the youngest of 3. My sister is 5 years older than me, and my brother is 4. So by the time I was in high school, my siblings were out of the house. It was around this time I guess my mom felt I could take care of myself. So, instead of heading into the nut house when she needed it, she began taking off. She would just up and leave. Drive to Florida, go visit friends, just leave. I remember being at work one day, and she called me at work to tell me I needed to go home and feed my grandfather dinner (my dad's dad lived with us) because she was heading to Florida. No one knew she was leaving that day, she just left. I asked my dad many years later why he stayed with her. (Life with Carol just wasn't easy.) He said he stayed for us kids. Not sure how his staying with her helped us, but in his mind it did.

Again, I am not trying to slam my mom. These are just memories. All of us kids really raised ourselves. A lot of times it seems like the roles were reversed. We needed to parent Carol.

I fought with my mom. I always told her what was on my mind. In reality now, I know I am a lot more like my mom than I would like to admit. Despite her many faults she could be a very strong woman. She did teach us to stand up for ourselves, (probably because she was unable to do that for herself). We learned how to survive in the real world. I know a lot of people who are book smart, and have no life smarts. She taught us life smarts. I'm sure living in NYC helped with that. I know that no matter what happens, I CAN take care of myself.

It wasn't until I had my own children that I better understood my mom. I was 27 when I had my first. My mom was 27 when she had her 3rd (me). I think if I had 3 children at 27, I too might have been a bit loopy. I remember she came to visit me when my first born was 3 weeks old. I still felt like I had no clue what I was doing with a newborn. I remember crying to her and telling her I should have just kept having cats. She reassured me that I would be a good mom and I just needed to give it time. For once she was right.

My mom was loud and over the top. She liked to party and was often the life of the party. I remember so many parties she threw while we were growing up. Every Christmas Eve we had an open house. My mom loved to cook and entertain. She loved to drink and dance. People really liked my mom. She often helped those outside her family more than she helped those within. She could be a really wonderful person at times. It seems that those were the times she had her demons under control. But they always came back. She had many self destructive tendencies.

After my mom died my brother, sister and I went through her house to sort out her belongings. (My dad had already died 6 years earlier). Years ago, my sister and I had given her a book called (I think) "For My Children's Children". It had questions to answer and spaces to write info about one's life. When we gave it to her, I don't think my sister or I really thought she would fill it out. She did. It was surprising to read some of the things she wrote. At the very back of the book it asked what was the one thing the person was most proud of in their life. My mother said "her children". None of us expected that. She wrote more, but suffice it to say, we were the most important thing she felt she had ever accomplished. She never verbalized that to us. I don't think she knew how. It was comforting to read that upon her death.

So here I sit 4 Mother's Days after her death. I wish I had been given more time with her. I wish she had been given a chance to purge herself of her demons. I wish my children had been given the chance to know her.

I do know I will see her again. I hope she is happy and finally free where she is.

Happy Mother's Day mom. I love you.

I miss thee, my Mother! Thy image is still the deepest impressed on my heart.~Eliza Cook